Armenian Adoption Adventure explores the latest in Adoption news from Armenia. Armenian Adoption Adventure has a network of 40 people worldwide that have adopted from Armenia. God Bless you on this difficult journey.

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Every evening, Melanie, Margaret, Sevana and I sit down and plan what to do
with our Advanced English students the next day. We had already talked about
family, school and hygiene with them, and were starting to run out of ideas
when Sevana suggested we ask the students what they would change and what they
would keep the same if they were president of Armenia. We were worried about
whether or not we could help them with political terms or if they would even be
interested at all, but the responses we got helped us see the changes needed in
Armenia through a child’s eyes and the simplicity of most of their suggested
changes showed some of the roots of the troubles Armenia faces.

Many of our students had worries that we would have expected to hear from
adults. These children are so much more aware of their surroundings than we had
expected. They share the household stress with their parents who are struggling
to make ends meet. Hasmik Hovasepyan says, “If I were president of Armenia, I
would create more jobs because I want to help people. I shall create more
buildings because I want people to have homes.”

Hasmik is 12 years old and has worries that I have never seen in an American
preteen, who would have been more worried about the latest video game or trendy
outfit.

Trash has never been a problem for us in the two weeks we’ve been in Gyumri
because there is a dumpster located about two blocks away from our temporary
home and we produce very little trash since we don’t cook our own food and
don’t clean much, but our students showed us that trash is a huge problem for
Gyumri’s smallest citizens. 13 year old Jenya Hovhannisyan says, “I would
create a law forbidding trash cans in the streets.”

We had seen trash on the streets of Gyumri, but began noticing it more after
reading our students’ responses. As Unger Gevorg explained to us, there are no
laws about trash on the streets, and people do not care to find a trash can,
instead choosing to dump whatever trash they have on the streets.

The innocence of the children really showed in some of their responses. 13
year old Angela Apriyan would “build parks for children and… give money and
clothes to orphanages… and establish flowers and trees in streets.”

12 year old Alina Mkhoyan wants to “eliminate criminals” and “have world
peace.”

11 year old Marian Nahapetyan would “eliminate money because people commit
crimes for money and it is not needed.”

14 year old Andranick Khachatryan “would buy wonderful footballers for our
country because today football is not good in Armenia.”

But some of the most memorable responses were the most serious ones. 14 year
old Gor Hovhanisyan wants “to help for women and and laws that prevent parents
from hitting their children.”

Hearing that from Gor, who is usually bouncing off the walls in our
classroom was incredible. It just emphasized the fact that we learn something
new about our students every day. I personally had always underestimated him
and am sorry it took so long to realize his true colors. 11 year old Roza
Simonyan wants “Ararat to be ours again,” but she had trouble explaining how
she would reach that goal if she were president.

12 year old Arpi Antanyan “would build skyscrapers and change every building
[and] keep the same only the natural beauty of Armenia.”

Like Hasmik and Arpi, many of our students wanted better, newer buildings in
Gyumri, which brought to light that over two decades after the 1988 earthquake,
there are still buildings that need to be rebuilt and the ones that survived
the earthquake are deteriorating over time. Arpi also wants to “create a law
about not smoking”

because she wants people to be healthy. In a country where smoking is
accepted in almost every location, Arpi’s response gave me hope that there are
still those who care about the health and wellness of the people. The final
sentence of Arpi’s response was most memorable: “I would beautify my country so
well that nobody would want to leave.”

As children of Armenian emigrants, we know that the conditions in Armenia
are unbearable for many people, but it was beautiful to see that there are
still those who believe that Armenians should stay in Armenia.

At the end of it all, Andranick said it best, “my country Armenia is the
best in the world.” It is these children with their big ideas and innocent
outlooks on life who will grow up to be the changes that Armenia needs in order
to live up to its full potential. I’m so proud that we were able to see the
beginnings of it.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

The most progressive of Children's funds in Armenia, is hosting their Winter reception in New York on December 13, 2013 at the Ciprini nightclub. Hollywood Actress Andrea Martin and Actor Victor Garber will host the event. Please support Children of Armenia fund, it is the only fund that promotes the economy in Armenia and the entire village with building of schools, hospitals, etc.,

Club Cipriani will be the venue for the 10th annual Children of Armenia fund.
The best Children's fund to support the future of Armenia

Children of Armenia Fund Tenth Annual Holiday Gala

Please
join the Children of Armenia Fund as we celebrate ten years of accomplishments
on Friday, December 13, 2013 at Cipriani 42nd Street. Cocktails & auction
start at 7pm, followed by dinner, honors, and performances at 8pm, and a night
of dancing at 10pm.

This unforgettable night will feature special guests and talented youth from
our community-led programs in Armenia.

The Children of Armenia Fund (COAF) is a non-profit,
non-governmental organization that uses community-led approaches to reduce
rural poverty, with a particular focus on children. Since the inception of its
programs in 2004, COAF has funded and implemented education, health, social,
and economic development programs serving more than 25,000 people in rural
villages of Armenia. Each person impacted represents one of the more than one
billion people living in poverty, and the methods used in Armenia can be
replicated in other communities, where children are most vulnerable. - See more
at: http://www.coafkids.org/#sthash.iI3XO3J3.dpuf

This saddens all Armenians what is happening especially to our brothers in Ethiopia. Ethiopians share over 2 centuries of closeness culturally, religiously and even their alphabet was written by the same man "Mashdots"
The King of Ethiopia in 1923 adopted 40 Armenian Orphans of the Genocide out of Jerusalem. However, now the tables are turned and Ethiopia is losing their future generation to corruption, it remains open to Americans but Ethiopian adoptions have closed to Canadians and other countries because of corrupt practices in the country.

In 2009, a van
from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, carrying seven young children and babies, was
stopped as it drove outside the rural, central Ethiopian town of Shashemene.
The children in the van were wards of Better Future Adoption Services (BFAS), a
U.S. adoption agency, and had been declared abandoned—their families unknown—in
the capital city of Addis Ababa. Police outside Shashemene arrested seven adults
riding in the van, including five BFAS employees. The staff, it appeared to
some, had sought to process children who had living family as though they had
been abandoned in another region of the country, so that their adoptions to the
U.S. could proceed more quickly.

At the time,
Ethiopia was in the midst of a dramatic international adoption boom, with the
number of adoptions to U.S. parents rising from a few hundred per year in 2004
to more than 2,000 five years later, and around 4,000 worldwide.The boom had
brought substantial revenue into the country, as agencies and adoptive parents
supported newly-established orphanages that became an attractive child care
option for poor families; some agencies paid fees to “child finders” locating
adoptable children; and the influx of Western adoption tourism brought money
that trickled down to hotels, restaurants, taxi-drivers and other service
industries.

Also with the boom
came early warning signs of adoption fraud and corruption. Before the van was
stopped near Shashemene, there had been a glut of abandonment adoptions being
processed in Addis Ababa. The number of adoption cases where the parents were
said to be unknown had caught the attention of Ethiopia’s First Instance Court,
the body responsible for approving international adoptions. The court announced
a temporary suspension on processing abandonment cases that originated in the
capital until it could investigate further. For some agencies, the news was
likely a blow, forecasting long wait times to process adoptions and frustrated
clients in the U.S. But there was a way around: the court would continue to
hear cases for children abandoned in other parts of Ethiopia.

One of the
children transported in the van would later be adopted by a Christian couple
just outside Nashville: 31-year-old Jessie Hawkins, a health and wellness
author, and her 38-year-old husband, Matthew, a marketing executive. The
Hawkinses had chosen BFAS as a protection against corrupt adoptions, assuming
that because an Ethiopian woman living in the United States, Agitu Wodajo, ran
it, the agency would operate more ethically than those lacking a local
connection. Wodajo’s public professions of Christian faith reassured them as
well.

Before the
children were moved, BFAS notified Hawkins and the adoptive families they were
taking the children to a cleaner and safer orphanage. Wodajo later claimed to
me that the children were moved not to change their paperwork but because a
colleague of a BFAS staffer who wanted to establish his own orphanage had asked
to “borrow” some BFAS children to pose as his wards so he could obtain a
license. The U.S. families didn’t learn until much later that the party had
actually been arrested.

But there were
earlier indications that the children’s paperwork at BFAS was a fluid matter.
An e-mail from BFAS to U.S. adoptive families that July said that the agency
was trying to locate children’s birth families in case the court decree didn’t
allow them to be processed as abandoned. “If [the birth families] are willing,
your children will be filed for court as a family member relinquishment and not
as an abandonment,” the letter read. “So, BFAS is waiting for one of two
things. 1) For the court to open their doors to new abandonment cases or 2) For
birth families to relinquish the children so we can file immediately.” It
seemed like an acknowledgement that the agency would pursue whatever avenue was
quickest.

Hawkins herself
was told different stories about the daughter she had committed to adopt, a
four-year-old girl who had been declared abandoned and whose mother BFAS now
said they were trying to find. “This is when I started to get suspicious,”
Hawkins told me. “I thought, if you’re so confident she was abandoned, why are
you trying to find her birth mother now?” But, she continued, “You get attached
to this child and you’re basically at [the agency’s] mercy at this point. You
believe these children are abandoned, orphaned, and you’re willing to do
whatever or you’ll lose this child and they’ll live there forever.”

In the weeks that
passed, while the children were said to be on the road, Hawkins and the other
families grew close, comparing stories of what they’d been told. Some parents
heard that nannies working at BFAS were in fact the mothers of some children
being relinquished for adoption. In emails Wodajo sent to prospective clients,
she wrote that they might be able to adopt infants as young as two months old
because they were working with pregnant girls. But as rumors spread that their
adoptions would be terminated or libel lawsuits filed if they pushed too hard,
a hush fell over the group.

When Hawkins was
finally called to Ethiopia to finalize her adoption, the BFAS staff there
reassured her that her daughter had indeed been abandoned. But after the girl
came to the United States she began acting out, behaving violently toward a set
of baby dolls she had gotten for Christmas and systematically shattering
glasses she found in the kitchen. A few months later, when she had learned some
English, the daughter pointed to a picture of the orphanage that Hawkins had
taped to her bedroom wall and told her, “When I lived there, I missed my mom.”

Hawkins responded,
“‘Honey, that’s nice of you, but you didn’t know me then.’ And then she kind of
looks at me like she’s afraid she was going to be in trouble, and you could see
her really choosing her words with the little bit of English she had. And she
said, ‘You know, I have another mom.’”

“I can’t even
begin to put into words what that feels like,” Hawkins told me. “Finding out
that you have someone else’s child simply because you happen to have been born
in a country where you’re more privileged than they are? You want to throw up,
you don’t know what to do.”

When Hawkins
called BFAS to present this information, she reached Agitu Wodajo directly.
Despite the many reassurances Hawkins had received in the past that the girl
was abandoned, she said Wodajo replied without hesitation that yes, she had met
the girl’s mother herself.